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Google Customer Reviews

For an online store, an easy way to establish/increase credibility is to use Google Customer Reviews! Google is the most used search engine and almost everyone shopping online starts their journey from the Google search bar. Now with Google Shopping, it has become more significant to incorporate Google Services in your Online Store, especially the ones that are free!

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Contents

  1. What are Google Customer Reviews?
  2. Requirements
  3. How to Set Up Customer Reviews for your Online Store?
  4. Product Ratings

What are Google Customer Reviews?

A free service from Google, the purpose of Customer Reviews is to allow retailers to collect valuable feedback from people who made a purchase on their Store. This feedback can then be shown in the form of a rating. The rating can be shown on Google Search Ads and Google Shopping. The feedback is collected via emailed surveys, a customer will be asked if they would like to “Opt-In” on the purchase confirmation page in order to receive this survey. More importantly, the review process is based entirely on the customers own discretion.

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The main features of Google Customer Reviews are:

  • Google Customer Reviews Opt-In: Users who opt-in to this after checkout may receive an email from Google Customer Reviews asking them to rate their experience with your store.

  • Google Customers Review Badge (Optional): A badge on your site that can help users identify your site with the Google brand and can be placed on any page of your site. The badge displays a seller rating score of 1-5 stars.

  • Google Customers Reviews Survey (Optional): The survey is a brief questionnaire that enables customers to rate their purchase experience with your site.

  • Seller Ratings: An aggregate score that appears on Search ads and Google Shopping, as well as on Google Customer Review badges.

Customer Reviews are also available on mobile sites, with the same opt-in option.

Requirements

  1. See if your country makes the list of eligible countries.

  2. Your shopping cart and checkout pages must be hosted on the same domain (if you got your domain with Jumpseller this is already done)

  3. The confirmation page must be hosted on your own domain (with Jumpseller you do not need to do this step)

  4. <!DOCTYPE HTML> must be added to the top of every webpage (Jumpseller stores have it by default)

  5. Your store has a separate order confirmation page (Jumpseller stores have this by default)

  6. You are able to add JavaScript code to all of your pages (possible with Jumpseller)

  7. You can direct customers back to an order confirmation page on your store’s domain if using an e-commerce platform that redirects customers to a third-party domain (Jumpseller does this)

  8. Your store has an encrypted order confirmation page i.e uses HTTPS (possible with Jumpseller)

  9. You will display the survey opt-in to all your users after checkout (possible with Jumpseller)

  10. For Google Customers Reviews badge, If you do not have the required 150 reviews, your Google Customers Reviews badge will state “Rating not available” until you establish a rating.

How to Set Up Customer Reviews for your Online Store?

  1. To enable the reviews, you must first have a Google Merchant account.

  2. Login to your Google Merchant Account, and click on the 3 dots on the top right, and go to Merchant Center programs.

    menu

  3. Once there, enable Customer Reviews.

    enable

  4. Read and sign the Google Customer Reviews agreement.

  5. Next, you must place the “Opt-In code” on your website in the code editor, and replace YOUR MERCHANT ID GOES HERE with your MERCHANT_ID and select your Language that you want for the survey by putting the correct value “YOUR LANGUAGE GOES HERE, eg: es, pt or en”. This will trigger the survey on the completed transaction page in the language you selected:

    enable

Important Note: In the following code, the varilable assign seconds = 14 refers to the exact day the customer will receive the review survey after payment. In this case, the value is set at 14, meaning the customer shall receive the review survey on the 14th day after payment. You can change this value if you prefer, but, the number of days must be fixed after purchase (not after delivery).

<!-- Google Customer Reviews -->
<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderOptIn" async defer></script>
{% assign seconds = 14 | times: 24 | times: 60 | times: 60 %}
<script>
window.___gcfg = {
  lang: "YOUR LANGUAGE GOES HERE, eg: es, pt or en"
};
window.renderOptIn = function() {
window.gapi.load('surveyoptin', function() {
window.gapi.surveyoptin.render(
{
// REQUIRED FIELDS
"merchant_id": "YOUR MERCHANT ID GOES HERE",
"order_id": "{{order.id}}",
"email": "{{order.email}}",
"delivery_country": "{{order.shipping_address.country_code}}",
"estimated_delivery_date": "{{ "today" | date: "%s" | plus: seconds | date: "%Y-%m-%d" }}",
// OPTIONAL FIELDS
"products": [{% for product in order.products %}{"gtin":"{{product.barcode}}"}{% if forloop.last == false %},{%endif%} {%endfor%}]});
});
}
</script>

code-js

To add the GCR badge to your site:

  • Paste the following code snippet into your web page:
		<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderBadge"
		  async defer>
		</script>

		<script>
		  window.renderBadge = function() {
		    var ratingBadgeContainer = document.createElement("div");
		      document.body.appendChild(ratingBadgeContainer);
		      window.gapi.load('ratingbadge', function() {
		        window.gapi.ratingbadge.render(
		          ratingBadgeContainer, {
		            // REQUIRED
		            "merchant_id": MERCHANT_ID,
		            // OPTIONAL
		            "position": "POSITION"
		          });           
		     });
		  }
		</script>

  • Place the code just before the closing </body> tag on the page. When placed with the survey opt-in code, the order does not matter.

  • And again, replace all the values (the values in Capitals) with your site-specific, dynamic values.

That’s it, you are done! Once the surveys have been collected, the reviews should appear on your Merchant Center dashboard and then can be used for seller ratings and displaying in the optional Customer Review badge.

Product Ratings

Product Ratings on Shopping ads are available in countries where Shopping ads are available, see the full list.

Product Ratings show star ratings on Shopping ads and, in some cases, on product listings on Google.

These ratings help shoppers with their purchase decisions, driving more qualified shoppers to your product pages. Note that product Ratings are not related to your store or business just to specific products.

Product Ratings appear as a 1 - 5 star rating system and a count of total reviews.

These ratings represent an aggregated rating and review data for the product, compiled from multiple sources including merchants, third-party reviews aggregators, editorial sites and consumers.

In order to be eligible for using Product Ratings, you need to first mee the following requirements:

  • Upload your reviews feed: Requires a minimum of 50 reviews across all of your products. Once you have submitted the interest form and gone through the onboarding process, you’ll be able to upload your feed through your Merchant Center account.

  • Use a reviews aggregator: If you are working with an approved Product Ratings aggregator, contact them directly on submitting Product Ratings (Note that this service is only available for Google Shopping merchants).

  • Google Customer Reviews: You can join the program by participating in Google Customer Reviews and adding optional lines of code to collect product reviews.

Once you have matched the requirements, you may sign up for Product Rating by submitting the Product Ratings Interest Form.

Read more about your Product Ratings.

Read more about your Google Customer Reviews dashboard.

For more questions, check out Google FAQs.

For more information on Google Customer Review integration, review Google Guide.